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Thursday, January 15, 2015

Starbucks

One
of the trends of the 1990's and 2000's was the rise of the coffee
culture, and with it, Starbucks. Why did our generation start to obsess
about coffee in a way our parents did not?

For our parents,
Maxwell House was considered the epitome of good coffee, and for most
folks, a spoonful of "instant" coffee was what they wanted in the
morning - no fuss, no mess, no grounds to clean up.

Why was this?
I think their generation saw science and its marvels as wondrous
improvements over a messy and often dangerous life of the past. Science
would cure diseases. Vaccines would wipe out Polio. Pasteurization of
milk would destroy the bacteria that caused tuberculosis.

And
hand-in-hand with this march of science was the rise of big industry.
Large corporate conglomerates were built up in the early part of the
20th century, offering stability to many workers who saw the ideal of
the "company man" replacing the independent spirit of the century
before.

So small companies were pushed out. In no time at all,
American had only a dozen or so major breweries. Only a few companies
made various foodstuffs, including coffee. Brand name, not source,
marked the product. And refinement through technology meant, to most
people, modernity and continual improvement. Pre-sliced factory-made
white bread, fortified with "vitamins" was obviously superior to some
brown ethnic round loaf from some questionable local bakery. Everything
would be bleached, from rice to flour, made white, made standard, made
bland and made uniform.

The 1960's generation, I think, broke
with this trend through drug use. Marijuana came from a variety of
sources, from Mexico, to Colombia, to Thailand, to Hawaii, oddly enough,
many of the same countries where coffee was grown. And these
pot-smokers indulged in a number of elaborate and complicated
paraphernalia, from simple pipes and roach clips, to elaborate
traditional water pipes, to modern glass bongs.

Fast-forward 20
years and the "Re-Hab" generation is looking for something new to obsess
about. Coffee being the only thing they can now consume, they take
their energies from drug use and apply them here. Suddenly, elaborate
coffee-making contraptions become popular, perhaps replacing the bong
and hash pipe of 20 years earlier. The merits of various types of
coffees, growing techniques, and countries of origin, as well as
roasting techniques and the like are now of critical importance - much
as marijuana cultivation was in years past.

Starbucks was in the
right place at the right time. Just as McDonald's caught the first wave
of America's craze for doing everything in automobiles, particularly
eating, Starbucks caught the first wave of American's need for elaborate
coffee rituals.

And part of that ritual was to be humiliated and degraded by the coffee clerk, now known as a barista,
and to also pay Japan-like prices for simple cup of coffee. That would
have been fine if it had ended there. But as the craze started to
taper off, Starbucks and their ilk, had to find new ways to draw in
their customers and keep them coming back, again and again.

Sugar and fat became the keys. While the original coffee pioneers were looking for the perfect cup of coffee, today, Starbucks sells food and beverages that are more like candy and ice cream than anything else.

In the past, an elaborate coffee drink might be a Latte, where frothed milk was placed on the top (with a cutesy leaf shape made in it). For the rest of the world, such a Cafe Au Lait
was no big deal, and viewed mostly as a breakfast drink. But in
America, it became an all-day beverage, and what was selling the drink
was the milk fat.

Sugary drinks quickly followed suit. Carmel
and chocolate syrups were added to coffee. Whipped cream was floated on
top. Carmel and chocolate were added to the whipped cream. The drinks
crept from hot coffee to cold milkshake almost imperceptibly. You
wake up one day realizing that you aren't drinking coffee at Starbucks
anymore, but something called a "Frappachino" or "Mocha Frappe". (A
Frappe is what people in Massachusetts call a milkshake).

These
milk-shake-like beverages are not cheap, and they can be calorie and fat
nightmares. You can gain a lot of weight and lighten your wallet very
quickly, particularly if you foolish enough to spend $8 on a
vente-mocha-frappe-caramel-machiono-yuppie-latte-fuck-me drink at Starbucks
and feel privileged to be sneered at by some 20-something with facial
piercings. People are idiots.

On dietary grounds alone, the rise of the "coffee drink"is concerning. These are not coffee
per se, but candy-like drinks laced with ice cream, caramel, sugar,
chocolate, or whatever else they can think of this month to throw in
there. The calorie count on these monsters is horrific. A vente "Java Chip Frappichino"
(excuse me, people eat this shit? It looks like a loose stool!) is an
astonishing 600 calories. You read that right, 600 calories - or more than my
entire dinner tonight. Ouch!

Even some of the more "reasonable"
drinks have 300 calories or more. Even basic drinks have 130 to 190
calories, or about the amount in a glass of Coca-Cola. Even their
"light" Frappachino can run 180 to 270 calories, depending on size. Is
that a lot? Well, considering that coffee, by itself, has FIVE (5)
calories, yea, that is a lot. And as I have noted again and again, we
gain weight not by going 1000 calories over our limit, but by merely
having a 100 calorie a day surplus.

100 extra calories a day = 1 pound a month = 12 pounds a year = 120 pounds a decade

Those
candy drinks are not real Coffee. People like to delude themselves into
thinking such things are "coffee" when they are little more than candy
ice-cream. About the only positive thing you can say about Starbucks is
that they finally dumped HFCS in 2009 (wow, what took so long?).

Once
you get into the habit of becoming a Starbucks junkie - and many folks
do just that - you will likely balloon to giant proportions if you drink
these high-calorie drinks. And many people, thinking they are
"coffee", don't think of them as a huge source of calories or a major
problem in their diet.

The inclusion of HFCS in Starbucks
beverages, until very recently, is also troubling. Some studies suggest
that HFCS literally is addictive. Since your body processes it
differently, it does not satisfy your sugar craving. So you end up
eating more and more of it, in a fruitless effort to get your brain to
shut off the "need sugar" light on your emotional dashboard.

With HFCS, you are the junkie, and Starbucks is your connection - or at least it was, until 2009.

Now
some folks may respond by saying "Well, I'll just drink the "light"
version instead." Sorry, no go, still 180 to 270 calories as noted
above. "Well, what about Chai Tea?" 320 calories in the tall, for a
Apple Chai infusion. Here's an example where an Apple a day doesn't
keep the doctor away!

And
yet, I see parents who would never give their children soft drinks, buy
them these candy frappichinos at Starbucks. Yuppies - go figure.

So,
is there an answer? Can you go to Starbucks and still eat responsibly?
Well, I think the answer is "No" and let me explain why.

To
begin with, you need to break the sweet/fat craving habit that is the
hallmark of immature taste buds. If you crave frappichinos and think
they "taste good", the only thing I can say to you is GROW UP FOR
CHRISSAKES! You are not a 6-year-old anymore. Stop eating ice cream
and pretending it is coffee.

Only by re-training your brain
to adult eating habits can you break the cycle of overeating and
obesity. If you are loading up on carbs and sugar, you will get fat,
period. Trying to fool your brain with substitutes is not the answer.
Allowing your tastes to mature is. Once you stop wolfing down sugar,
you will find it repulsive later on.

But what about the basic
coffee? Yes, believe it or not, you can still buy a regular coffee at
Starbucks - a paper cup with just coffee in it. And like coffee
everywhere else, it is about 5 calories a cup. But the problem is,
there is always the temptation to buy that huge, bready, and tasteless
scone (there, I said it) or some other high-carb candy treat to go with
it. The big-as-your-head blueberry scone is a staggering 460 calories, or about what you should be eating as an evening meal.

(By
the way, want to piss off your local barista? Ask for a "small"
8-ounce coffee. Usually, the price isn't even on the menu, as they want
you to buy the "tall" 12-ounce cup. And yea, they will try to
"correct" your use of the English language by getting you to call it a
"short". Don't let them! Say "I want a small coffee" and let the line
back up out the door until the "Barista" finally breaks down and makes
it. Fuck Starbucks!)

Why does Starbucks piss me off so much? Well, let me tell you. Holier-than-thou Yuppies will watch a movie like Supersize Me
and then run down McDonald's - all while sipping a frappichino and
wolfing down a head-scone (and about 1,000 calories in the process, all
carbs!). They decry one bad food over another, based on status alone.

Both
McDonald's and Starbucks sell junk food. But people will run one down
and not the other, based solely on status. And that's just wrong!

So
yes, theoretically, you can go in there and just order a small coffee.
But in reality, you will be tempted to buy much more. You are better
off to plan your meals for the day than
to impulse purchase food at expensive retail outlets like Starbucks.
Coffee, in small quantities, is not necessarily harmful to a great
extent. But if you are feeling "tired" in the middle of the afternoon,
chances are, what you need isn't a Coffee and a danish, but just to
bring your blood sugar up with a pre-planned mid-afternoon snack.

And
you see, the Starbucks habit does just the opposite - loading you up
with carbs through frappachino drinks and pasty scones, so your blood
sugar soars. You feel "high" right afterwords, wound up on coffee and
blood sugar. But then you plummet - hard and fast. You get cranky and
nervous. I suspect more than one divorce was instigated by a Starbucks
emotional crash-and-burn in the afternoon on the ride home.

Here are some better ideas than wasting money and calories at Starbucks:

1. Drink hot water.
No really, Grandma was right. Half the coffee experience is the
ritual of drinking hot water. One morning while fasting for a blood
test, I had a cup of hot water. And for a moment, I thought I was
drinking coffee. The mind is weird like that. What you may actually
like about coffee is the temperature. Too drastic? Try tea. Carry
teabags with you, preferably no-caffeine herbal teas.

2. Pack snacks - get in the HABIT.
Don't rely on local food stores for your snacks, as their choices are
often bad, and when your blood sugar is low, you often make bad choices.
If you pre-pack a mid-afternoon snack, you'll feel better and more
awake and will eat less at dinner.

3. Going with a friend?
Yes, friends from work like to go to such places, and you can't always
shut yourself out of the social order by declining such invites. But
make them occasional, special treats, not everyday occurrences. Order a
small coffee (see above) or plain tea. Look around for healthier
options for snacks. Starbucks does have a fruit and cheese plate, but
you have to look for it, and it isn't at all locations. If you must
have a scone, split it four ways (that will still be over 100 calories apiece!).

But
for the most part, I would say to avoid Starbucks at all costs. They
have been selling scandalously high-calorie food for over a decade now -
and getting away with it by flying under the radar, so to speak. No
one thinks of Starbucks as junk food, but junk it is! And the use of
HFCS until recently is really inexcusable for a company that touts its
health and eco- awareness.

Get a cup of Joe at your local diner. You'll likely be better off and have change for your $5 bill....